Interview: Katie Grand




Katie Grand recently spent £2,000 on dry-cleaning her clothes, because she'd found moths in the home. The reason it cost £2,000 to dry-clean her clothes was because she gets kept every garment she's ever owned since day of 15. When her last house was completely submerged in clothes, she started putting a number of them in storage ... until she realised she was paying £250 per month kept in storage fees and that it would be cheaper simply to get a bigger house. So recently she bought a huge house, in Tufnell Park, where she lives along with her boyfriend Steve Mackey, bass player with Pulp, two guinea pigs, and her fashion archives. The sitting area is entirely lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves containing bound volumes of Arena, Blitz, Dazed & Confused, Elle, i-D, The Face, Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair, and British, American, Italian and French Vogue. Upstairs, one room is dedicated to shoes and purses, with lots of matching shoeboxes with photos on the exterior, but additionally great overflowing piles of shoes and boots not even filed. Then there is the garments room, that contains 10 rails, tightly hung with at least 500 garments, arranged from a to z, A for Alaia, B for Balenciaga, C for Chanel, but additionally G for Gap and W for Warehouse because those were many of the first clothes she bought. There's also a rail of vintage clothes and a whole rail of Prada. But the room is definitely full, so Grand thinks soon she'll have to institute a two-tier system or, of course, buy a much bigger house.She can afford to make this happen because jane is known inside the fashion industry as Katie-Grand-a-Minute. This is an exaggeration, but she admits from a amount of arm-twisting, that they earns £3,000-4,000 per day like a fashion stylist and consultant, and also at present works 30-40 days per year for Louis Vuitton, about 1 month for Loewe, and the other Four weeks to get a big Italian name. This is all in addition to her normal work, that's editor-in-chief of POP, the drop-dead cool magazine she founded in 2000. But that, she says, pays next to nothing - it requires up 70 per cent of her time, and produces only five per-cent of her income.With this particular formidable fashion background, I became expecting Katie Grand to get, well, grand, or otherwise terrifyingly glossy. However, she seems as fresh and unpolished as a schoolgirl. She wears no make-up, uses no cosmetics , has locks and big gaps in her teeth and speaks which has a Birmingham accent. She actually is 37 but seems much younger. She invited me to POP's office in Clerkenwell to satisfy her 'Popettes' - the editorial assistants who also become models for the magazine - and in addition Clara who ended up being the office rabbit. Clara was hopping round the floor eating Ryvita; the Popettes, clad variously in torn jeans, sequined tops and gladiator sandals, were eating Ryvita at their desks. Grand clapped her hands and announced 'editorial meeting' as well as the Popettes gathered round her, giggling. She said she wanted them to 'think the Queen', and, after more giggling and conferring, they volunteered to attend Buckingham Palace, dressed as people in the Royal Family, and pose while using guardsmen. Then they all broke into song, 'They're changing guards at Buckingham Palace. Christopher Robin transpired with Alice' and dashed off. It was the fastest editorial meeting That i have ever attended.In the playpen atmosphere, it's astonishing that POP ever happens, aside from that it is as slick, professional and successful as it's. It absolutely was launched being a twice-yearly which has a print run of 70-80,000 copies. It now comes out thrice 12 months - Grand is looking to push that to four - and possesses a circulation of 125,000. With typical modesty, she says it's all thanks to Mark Frith, ex-editor of warmth, giving her good advice on cover lines. However the covers are brilliant too. To be with her first cover she photographed a gaggle of her friends - however they been Stella McCartney, Luella Bartley, Liberty Ross and Phoebe Philo - lounging around inside their underwear. Then for your fourth issue Stella McCartney suggested they need to have Madonna and rang Madonna who said yes immediately. She arrived punctually, agreed to everything the POP team suggested, posed for seven hours and parted friends - 'It was one of the most smooth-running thing we've ever done.' Then Victoria Beckham said she'd like to assist POP and Grand agreed because 'It gave the look of the correct moment - she was the favourite woman in the world at that time.' And then she got Kylie, whom she'd dealt with for years, and Drew Barrymore, whom she also knew, 'So there is a specific casualness about how it all evolved. Nothing ever felt that uptight.'But of course it meant that Grand was then around the treadmill of getting to find a celebrity for every cover, which introduced her on the horrible business of 'celebrity-wrangling'. She'd never needed to take action before, 'and you get during these great big pickles Body was bad I became just crying continuously. A buddy had instigated a shoot with a big, big Hollywood celebrity, nonetheless it never was written - also it really should have been - that it needed to be an appliance cover. And so i sent off this email saying, "Really great pix but we've gone with a different cover". And got the most important tirade back. The fallout was horrendous also it would have been a big Hollywood agent who'll never assist us again and also at time I became just desperately wanting to explain to someone, without sounding as being a complete idiot, "I'm really sorry, no-one explained how you can do this". It turned out a tough way to learn now I'm really careful that things are in writing and now we assist a company like our celebrity stuff.'But, she says, it is very difficult to predict which takes care of will sell and which won't. 'Kate Moss was our bestselling issue ever however the Liz Hurley issue - which took a phenomenal amount of work - didn't actually sell that well, even though it got a great deal of press coverage. [They photographed Hurley just five to six weeks after her baby was born.] So you obtain a bit caught up inside the hype, and then the sales figures are available in and you also think, "Oh which is a shame!"'When I met Grand she'd just been to Nyc for a POP shoot while using art photographer Ryan McGinley and model Agyness Deyn. She'd never worked McGinley but he explained he'd like to photograph Agyness, whom naturally Grand knew, and Grand suggested they need to perform some nudes, because Agyness had never done a nude shoot, and McGinley agreed. 'And then a week later he sent me this reference photograph of children falling a fire escape - it had been from the 1950s I do think - and said he'd love to have her falling. And naked. And then we wound up with two stunt men and Agyness jumping naked from five storeys to a huge huge crash mat. It had been incredible.' Soon afterwards she did a shoot with Grace Jones, who arrived six hours late, but Grand was expecting that - 'We did her for Dazed & Unclear about Ten years ago and she was 48 hrs and eight hours late, and we all form of knew what we were getting yourself into. But she was amazing, when she came.' Then Grand flew off and away to Madrid to perform some styling for Loewe, and straight on Milan for that menswear shows.She works nonstop - she gets only had three weekends off in 2010. But she likes hard work. She was once a huge drinker in their twenties - 'loud and obnoxious and falling over' - and found, when she stopped drinking in their thirties, that they had so many more hours to fill.What does Katie Grand have that makes her worth £4,000 a day? She giggles on the question and, typically, deflects it using a joke. 'I've got an excellent number of CDs which always helps if you are preparing a fashion show. At 3am everyone enjoys to know some Dolly Parton - that's always successful - and I'll always remember Miuccia [Prada] spinning round to Kylie.' But seriously? Obviously she must have a great eye, but what else? 'I suppose I get a certain viewpoint that individuals like. And I'm crazy about shoes and bags and wish every turn to use a bag, i love utilizing people on design. That i'm really quick at cutting to the chase. A lot of creative people often overthink and procrastinate and wish to analyse things, and when you're utilizing big designers plus you've got a show next Sunday, you have to say, "I like that, do not like that, let's make it happen, let's get it done in grey".' Additionally, I'd personally guess, jane is valued to be with her energy, her puppyish enthusiasm, her willingness to provide other people the financing cheap she's fun to get along with.Her obsession with fashion started when she was 12, and her father brought her Vogue as well as the Face to read when she was ill during intercourse. 'I was actually nerdy. And form of overnight I will remember clearly thinking, "I would like to be cool".' She grew up in Birmingham where her father was obviously a research scientist with the university and her mother was a primary-school teacher. They separated when she was seven - her mother attended hospital to possess some cartilage removed rather than returned - and Grand stayed with your ex father, though she still saw her mother every single day after school.She failed her 11-plus - 'I was always useless at exams' - and went to 'quite a difficult school where everybody was very kind of street-savvy which means you end up with a bit of that. And my dad was very liberal and accustomed to let boys sleep over, so me and my friend Jo were very social from a significant young age.' Her father meanwhile stood a succession of girlfriends but eventually settled with one called Dianne, who encouraged Katie's curiosity about fashion and took her on shopping trips to London. 'I was quite relieved when he settled with Dianne - though for the initial few months when she moved in, I sort of smashed a lot of things.'She also stopped eating. 'From 15 to 25 I did not really eat much. I simply thought about being thinner, however i couldn't get under eight stone it doesn't matter what Used to do. I might eat two tablespoons of muesli per day with two tablespoons of water - I still can't eat muesli even today. Then I'd maybe have two fruit pastilles about five, and then three satsumas and also on an extremely bad day I'd have a very banana. I will remember meals I had created during those years simply because they were so rare.' And - presumably because of the extreme diet - she gets never had periods, ever. But that does not matter, she says, because she gets never wished to have children. She's been with your ex boyfriend Steve Mackey for A decade but 'he does not want to get married and I don't want to have children'. Since the only child of two only children, she is adamant that the Grand line stops along with her.When she was 17, she wrote to Liz Tilberis, the editor of Vogue, asking how she could become editor some day. Tilberis advised her to venture to Saint Martins so she proceeded an art foundation course at Bournville, Birmingham, where she was student of year, as well as on to Saint Martins, where she made good friends with Stella McCartney and Giles Deacon. But she found the course disappointing and was pleased to quit when she met the photographer Rankin. He asked her ahead and help over a magazine he was doing called Eat Me, and on Dazed & Confused, that she started with Jefferson Hack. She says she learnt a lot from Rankin: 'He's very positive and the man always had that mentality of do-it-yourself as opposed to benefit someone else. That spirit of Oh let's just do it, let's provide an exhibition, let's start a manuscript.' That they had an affair for the 12 months, but she sustained being employed by Dazed & Confused for seven years, with no budget, no salary,cheap gucci handbags, but limitless the possiblility to learn, also to exhibit her talents being a stylist.Her big commercial breakthrough came in the event the Italian leather goods house Bottega Veneta decided they wanted to give themselves 'more of your fashion edge' and hired her to revamp their image. She got Giles Deacon to development for them, and 'We created a big splash with all the fashion shows and BV was mentioned being this awesome label all of a sudden, and that brought me on the attention of Mrs Prada, who said, "Come and take a step fun for me". It turned out an incredible opportunity and i believe that has been when individuals started referring to me as being a stylist.'Miuccia Prada, she says reverently, is regarded as the inspiring person she's ever worked for. 'She is really bright, so smart, and so good at her job. Any suggestion she available would always make something a lot better. She's just an exceptionally smart woman with impeccable taste.' So just why did Katie are amiss to be with her? 'She stopped working when camping, unfortunately. I do think she got bored with me. I used to be as a result of go and shoot the Miu Miu campaign i got a telephone call saying they'd thought we would work with a different stylist. Therefore i cried a lttle bit. I still see her socially but still adore her and she's always very sweet if you ask me, however i think she was bored. She kind of gets over people. However it is just horribly upsetting to be on the receiving end.'Meanwhile, Emap, now Bauer, had lured Katie from Dazed & Confused to get fashion director of The Face in 1999, with the promise that she may ultimately start her own magazine. She launched Play 2000 plus it made money straight away, largely since it had such low overheads, whereas The face area quietly expired beneath the weight of its own payroll . Katie thought we would put almost all her budget into production and very little into salaries - she accustomed to joke that they was the lowest-paid person at Emap. 'But I'd prefer to keep the standard high since it is, than i got paid more. That's how we get everyone to aim for us - for the reason that printing is beautiful. Usually the photographers are employing their own money, which means you feel your debt is it for them to print along with possible.' And bright young things flock to get results for POP for peanuts because they know it will be good on his or her CVs and finally result in the grand-a-minute advertising gigs that can pay their mortgages.Last year Mulberry tried to hire Katie Grand as creative director and she were built with a long contemplate it in the final decided that, 'when push came to shove, it didn't think that the right thing that i can do, because I never felt I became particularly efficient at design. I like working with people who are extra talented - Marc [Jacobs] is amazing, Giles [Deacon] is amazing, Miuccia [Prada] needless to say is amazing - they're so superior to I will be. I recognised at art school which i could possibly be adequate - but there is a bunch of adequate designers around. Along with the problem for designers like Giles could be that the actual designing, the fun bit, is probably below 10 % of how they spend their day. Whereas the stylist come in and merely create this whirlwind - "Ooh, could we do it in red?" - and then you leave. I really always thought like a stylist would have been a greater job!'But her first love continues to be magazines. She has abandoned her initial ambition for being editor of Vogue, because 'I realised quite a while ago that,Louis Vuitton Outlet, much as I love Vogue and W, the sort of magazines that are nearest to my heart include the style magazines, much like the Face, i-D, Interview. I find Interview magazine really inspiring - not too I'm comparing myself to Andy Warhol! - and that i suppose I want to build POP into something equally iconic, with covers people remember.'What else, aside from that? Does she possess wild ambitions? 'Ooh, that's hard. I'd want to meet the Queen! I continue to say to Giles in case you have an OBE, I'd had better be coming together with you!' No, seriously, precisely what does she imagine doing? 'I do not know. That's a very difficult question. You realize if you are with your twenties and dealing out what you look for concerning your life, you say OK, as soon as I'm 30 I'd like to help Prada, edit a manuscript, get a house - and i also ticked all of the boxes quite quickly. But during my thirties Perhaps I've solidified things i started in my twenties i want to just proceed dealing with nice people doing nice things. I'm not unhappy with what I'm doing. However seriously don't know.'